Finishing Up Home Projects

It's 81degrees outside and I'm sitting in the backyard soaking up this beautiful Nevada sunshine. 

The boys are both napping after an active morning at the gym and I'm taking advantage of the peacefulness to catch up on a few things. 

On my to do list:

Keeping up with you, friends and family - through this post

Writing a love note to my man - he works so hard!

Researching a new vacuum 

(Yes! The budget says we're ready to go ahead and pull the trigger)

And, if I get to them, 

A Better Homes and Gardens & Martha Stewart Living magazines. 

Catching up on magazines is truly a sign that I have too much time on my hands. 

Well, except for my Food Network Magazine. That's my current favourite and I classify browsing it's pages of scrumptious recipes as 'work' since I'm always looking for dishes to feed my family. :)

But first, 

let me catch you up on a few small projects around the house that we've finally finished. 

1. The Stool

Braden picked up the wood for it about a few months ago and then during some time off recently, designed and made it. 

Not only is it beautiful, it has changed our lives.

Now Ryder can reach all of his drawers and dress himself in the morning. 

He can take care of going potty and washing his hands on his own. 

And, I don't have to lift him all the way up onto the counter when he helps me in the kitchen daily. 

I'm sure I'll appreciate this even more as Baby #3 continues to grow!

Ryder affectionately calls it his 'stood'.

Here he is playing in the oatmeal (making toad in the hole) while I prepare dinner.

2. The Measuring Ruler

The vision for this project dates back a little further. 

We used Christmas money from grandparents to get this wood and it truly was a labour of love. 

Braden made the ruler to replicate a real ruler as accurately as possible and even burned in the numbers in the right font by hand. 

Next we just need to decide how to record the boys' height.

3. The Book Wagon

Being married to a woodworker is awesome. 

Being married to an unemployed woodworker would be awesome too.

Too many projects and not enough time is always the quandary.  

The problem is that we all love books. 

As our family grows and our children develop, we just collect more and more awesome books.

But, you can't buy bookshelves when you're married to a woodworker. 

So, in an effort to organize the books our boys have in their room, I turned to Pinterest.

And, thanks to some birthday money for the boys 

and a local antique store, we were able to solve the problem. 

They love their book wagon!

And that's what's new here.

Saturday At Its Finest

Growing up, Saturday was our day to get things done. 

I still love Saturdays for that reason.

So, after a yummy breakfast of our favourite Belgian waffles with fresh strawberries 

and a morning music practice at church, 

we got busy.

Braden had a friend over and the two of them were out in the shop working on a change table for their new little baby coming soon, so I had the house to myself.

My first project was a Pinterest-type craft that I've been forming in my mind over the last week.

These days it's rare that I don't have a helper close at hand.

And here it is.

My new burlap Easter banner. 

That's what Easter's all about anyway, right?!

Here I have to pause and tell you a little story about what happened yesterday.

I had been working in my sewing room and Ryder was sitting next to me playing with a calculator. 

He pressed the plus (+) sign and was so excited to show me the 'cross' that showed up on the calculator screen.

"Look Mama, it's a cross. 

Just like where Jesus died."

Little conversations like this make my heart to happy.

I finished up the productive part of my day by preparing my garden bins and two big galvanized metal tubs for spring planting.

Fertilizer is in and the soil is turned and ready for planting.

Now if only I could find those herb seed packets that I bought last week...

My DIY Door Project - Finally Finished!

This last Fall I picked up an old door that was posted for free on a local sell/swap page. 

I didn't really know where it would take me, but I do love getting creative with home projects - especially with Pinterest to give me all kinds of ideas.

Here's my blank slate:

I began by removing all of the hardware and then taking out 

the window frame and two intact glass frames.

I sanded the frame down and painted it white.

It looked terrible!

Ryder was just excited to see himself though. 

I ended up doing a coat of grey and then topping it with white so I could give it a distressed look.

Much better. 

Then I found the mirror from a previous failed DIY mirror attempt. 

Yes, these projects fail more often than not - it seems.

 A local glass shop cut the mirror to size and I had to scrape all of the gunk (paint, paint stripper, and who knows what else) before it was finally clean and ready to go. 

My resident handyman hung it up and we've been enjoying it ever since. 

Pardon the odd angle, 

I didn't want to show off the explosion of toys on the floor in our den. ;)

Ryder even volunteered to be in the picture, which is pretty rare.

Goofball!

The second half of the project was repurposing the matching windows. 

It took me a while to decide which Pinterest idea to shoot for, 

but I ended up with this idea for our front entryway. 

I found a local Mama who customs makes decals for just such projects. 

She printed up our name and anniversary year in no time at all. 

All I had to do was choose a wedding photo and wait for Costco to have it printed.

I am pretty pleased with the results after only about $12 in out of pocket expenses. 

 Welcome to our Home

Now that my door projects are finally complete, 

I'll have to start scouring Pinterest for my next DIY project.

Oh There's No Place Like Home For The Holidays!

We went on our second annual Lake Tahoe Christmas Tree Hunt!

Local friends, this is a tradition we love and tree permits are available at the USDA Forest Service Office for $10.

This year we had Pop & Mimi with us - plus a LOT of snow!

 We picked up a sled and gloves for Ryder in South Lake Tahoe.

They ended up being essential to our happy tree hunt.

 Plus, after the tree was loaded up, we had a fun time taking a few runs in the sled.

We love Lake Tahoe!

And our winter wonderland outing was followed by a fun sweater party with friends - 

who also helped us decorate our new tree.

Here we are - ugly sweaters and all.

 And every toddler needs a friend like Mrs Davis!

It's good to be home for the holidays - 

And, It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here!

Life As We Know It

This week I've had a hard time keeping up with my 'to do' list as well as keeping up to date with you, my family and friends. Since living life takes precedence over documenting it, that's been our focus this last week, but today I finally got around to picture taking - you won't believe how much Lynden has grown. We got out of the house this morning to run some errands and stopped at the library to play and read for a little bit.

He's now 7 months old!

While the boys were napping I made a little more project on my latest DIY mirror and reclaimed wood window frame. The glass has been cut down to size. Today I worked at scraping all the old junk off of the glass and it cleaned up pretty well. 

Two coats of paint later, all it needs are little nails to keep the glass snugly in place. 

Ryder was pretty excited to see 'Ryder-boy.'

We've been enjoying our own fresh eggs for a couple of months now. The excitement of feeding the chickens our scraps hasn't waned at all as far as Ryder is concerned. He's always eager to help.

This poor broody hen is always the easiest for Ryder to catch and carry around. 

Lucky chicken!

Finally! 

Ryder helped me pick the last of my red and golden beets to make a big pot of beet borscht for dinner. 

Here he is showing off a few of the little ones.

Garage Sale Fun & A New DIY Project!

Just for fun, I made a list and took the boys with me to a few garage sales Friday morning. It was a great wrap up to the week and just a fun out of the ordinary outing for us. Ryder thrives on new adventures.

The first few were so so.

I found a pair of soft leather John Deere cowboy boots for Lynden to wear this winter. <3

And if the day had ended there, we would have been satisfied.

$1 spent. Tons of fun conversation in the car with Ryder.

But then we happened across an awesome estate sale.

Barns full of old junk, tables laden with a things we didn't even know still existed.

Haha, what a blast! 

Of course, by this time Ryder was getting just a little bit tired and we were in desperate need of a potty, so we snagged a few winners and headed out.

Ryder was so excited about his 'new' metal Tonka cement mixer and roller.

I picked up a few antique Christmas tree ornaments and a vintage beautifully made romper - if we ever have a girl - and no, I'm not pregnant. ;)

All in all, our morning was a great success.

We will definitely be venturing out to hunt for more treasure again soon!

My latest project at home is repurposing an old wooden door that I picked up for free from a girl in town. I have a mirror frame that I tried to paint while Braden was on deployment - big fail! Since the poor mirror has been sitting in a box in our garage, I thought the window frame from the door would be just the perfect new frame for the mirror.

Braden told me I was on my own on this one - I don't blame him!

After a few hours today, I had removed all of the rusty hardware, figured out how to take the window until from the door without breaking anything, got the panes out (I need to think of another project for those!), and sanded everything down.

Pardon the pliers. Ryder was 'helping' me work on this one.

Now comes the fun part. I get to scour Pinterest for ideas on how to refinish it. I'm thinking a nice simple paint job, but could use some colour inspiration too. Once I've got that done, I'll just have to take the mirror to get cut down to fit the frame and then find a place for it. Eek, I can't wait!